The trends are clear: Publicly funded colleges and universities are serving more students, who are less prepared, with less state support.
Vincent Tinto describes these trends and the challenges they bring:
For over 40 years access to higher education has improved, and college enrollments swelled from nearly 9 million students in 1980 to over 20 million today. But while enrollments have more than doubled, overall college completion rates have increased only slightly. Only about half of all college students in the U.S. earn a degree or certificate within six years. For community college students the numbers are worse--a little over a third earn a degree or certificate. The struggles of low-income and first-generation community college students are most troubling--only one-quarter of them complete a credential.
The facts are clear. Despite our success in improving access to college, we have been unable to convert those gains into higher completion rates... (Tinto, 2011)
MSU Denver’s own student persistence and graduation rates fall right in line with these broader trends. Our 6-year graduation rate hovers around 20% (a figure, albeit, that counts only students who enter as full-time first-time college students).
These underlying trends are not likely to change. No one is expecting an infusion of increased public funds into higher education. The level of student preparedness for college is not likely to change in any significant way. Regional comprehensive institutions like MSU Denver have been adapting and will need to continue adaping in order to meet students’ needs with fewer resources. Redesigned courses are one solution.
One motivation for redesigning courses--not the motivation I want to stress here, but one motivation nonetheless--is financial. Redesigned courses have the potential to foster deeper learning at a lower cost per student (yes, this means that class sizes can grow while still improving in student learning outcomes). Also, financial gains can be obtained by reducing the number of students who withdraw from a course or who earn a D or F. In their book Next Generation Course Redesign, Burner and Carriveau explain:
If a student does not succeed in a general education course, there are consequences for both the student and the institution, most of them bad. Many of these students are discouraged and drop out. In fact, students who performed well in introductory courses were twice as likely to complete the degree as their less successful counterparts. Those who do not succeed and persist in the program must retake the course, taking a seat away from an entering student. Sometimes up to 50% of the seats in notorious “bottleneck” courses are taken up by repeaters. (p. 5)
No one who is serious about course redesign, though, thinks that cost savings are the primary reason why we should rethink how students spend their time learning in and out of class. Obviously it’s about the learning, and redesigned courses can promote student learning, or student success even in the face of challenging trends, by doing the following:
- increasing student’s time on task (remember the one who does the work is the one who learns)
- aligning instruction with how the mind works
- creating the greatest opportunity for students to learn, practice, and show mastery of skills and content
- embedding frequent opportunities for feedback
- giving students the chance to understand patterns, make connections, formulate meaning, and learn deeply.
Make it more likely for a student to learn and succeed in a single class, and you make it more likely for that same student to succeed throughout an entire course of study and graduate with a degree!
